


same sea

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-3A, Pre-Relationship, Revisiting Buck's trauma, lots of feelings, pre-3b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22503652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: “I can’t sleep,” he says. “I - after that call on the beach last week. I thought they were over, but. The dreams.” Buck motions to his head, a helpless twitch of his fingers. “They’re really bad, Eddie.”A meditative look at a brief moment in time between two best friends with so many issues. Or, Buck works through some unresolved pain, with Eddie's help.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Comments: 19
Kudos: 329





	same sea

**Author's Note:**

> you know who you are if you've helped me finally channel my screaming love for this show into fic. thank you. i know this is short, but i needed to break the seal before other fics come down the pike. Song and title is by Lights, called Same Sea.

_And when the currents take us out again_

_To opposite oceans_

_Out of the hands of safety_

_From the solace to the deepest end_

_Places we break and bend_

_You're the one in it with me_

|

It’s 4 AM and Eddie is on Buck’s couch.

“I didn’t know who else to call,” Buck explains, voice small. He sits alongside Eddie, an untouched mug on the table in front of him. Eddie is holding his own mug, shadows lengthening over his face. 

There’s a stillness to this hour, a watery blue light from the predawn sky streaming in through Buck’s windows, casting everything with a surreal sort of editorial-spread glow. It’s quiet, except for the hum of the air conditioner and the tap-tap-tap of Buck’s heel on the hardwood floor.

He’s not sure what he expects Eddie to say, not when Buck’s supposed to be fine, not when he’s supposed to be over it. It’s been months since they last talked about the tsunami, since Eddie joked about Buck’s obsession with natural disasters, and then later, gently suggested he should maybe talk to someone. It’s been months since Buck ignored the suggestion because he was _fine_ , he was _over it._

It’s been months since his last nightmare.

But then there was this bad shift a few days ago, with a drowning victim and the relentless sound of the ocean lapping against the shore. The victim died, and Buck sunk into a place in his mind that feels now like a mud-pit, sucking him under muck and grime that he’s spent a long time trying to clean out of his head. Try as he might, Buck finds he can’t outstrip the rising tide in the night, can’t escape or ignore the memories that have come in unending, swamping waves, dreams without shapes or sound, only the endless rush of the ocean over his head.

Tonight, he woke up screaming, eyes gritty with the reminder of saltwater and silt. On autopilot, he grabbed his phone, and throat still raw, he gasped into the speaker, _please come over Eddie, I think I’m dying, please please please._

And despite having to get someone to take care of his kid, despite not getting any sleep after two consecutive shifts, despite the fact that Buck is a grown man and shouldn’t need other people to calm him down, Eddie came. 

Eddie came, and Eddie is here. Sleep-rumpled and weary, but here. No questions asked, with that medic training kicking in when he first keyed into the apartment, soothing Buck, leading him through some breathing exercises, making him some tea.

All that’s left is an explanation, and Buck doesn’t know what to say. Where to start.

“I can’t sleep,” he says. “I - after that call on the beach last week. I thought they were over, but. The dreams.” Buck motions to his head, a helpless twitch of his fingers. “They’re really bad, Eddie.”

There’s a throb of shame in his chest, a cloying, climbing frustration that he can’t be what people need. Can’t be _better_. He rubs at his sternum absently, massaging the ache. 

“I try to suck it up, y’know?” Buck continues, voice low. “I try to be like Christopher. He had it worse out there in the water, and he’s so - he’s so awesome, he’s adjusted great -”

Eddie interrupts with a noise like a scoff, puts a hand out to forestall any more words. 

“He’s also a _kid_ , Buck,” Eddie says. “He’s more resilient than us. And he’s had therapy. Lots of therapy.” 

His hand drops to Buck’s thigh. The warmth of his palm bleeds through the threadbare material of Buck’s sweatpants, chasing away the chill that’s threatening to settle under Buck’s skin.

“You’re allowed to need help, man.” Eddie says gently. “You’re allowed to ask for it.”

A breath pulls through Buck’s lungs, and it feels unexpectedly serrated.

Despite best efforts to let it all fade away and start anew, the ghosts of earlier this year still linger; in his lowest moments, Buck can sometimes hear Eddie’s voice, the frustration and annoyance of that day in the grocery store, heavy in the words: “You’re exhausting!”

The memory stings now the way it did then, that initial pinch of the insult itself and then the deeper twist of not being seen, not being understood. How Buck had thought, stupidly, that Eddie would take Buck’s side because he knew Buck’s heart, Buck’s good intentions. But instead, he’d tossed that all back in Buck’s face, had called Buck selfish. Of course underneath, Eddie had been suffering, too, and even as he was hurting, Buck was also mad at himself for not being there for his friend.

It had been a mess. And Buck might be forgiven, and Buck might _have_ forgiven, but it still -

Snags in his ribcage, hangs there, teeters uselessly like it’s lying in wait. The thought that he’s one misunderstanding away from being tossed out of the lives of people he loves. The fear that he’s just tolerated instead of trusted and needed. _Wanted_.

It takes his brave and turns it into stupid, sometimes.

“I know,” Buck lies, looking away. “I just...I wanted to handle it on my own.” 

Eddie makes that scoffing sound again and shoves at Buck’s knee slightly. 

“Historically, it hasn’t worked out for either of us when you try and do that,” he says lightly. 

After a moment, with no response because Buck just isn’t sure how to joke, not about _then_ and not about _now_ , Eddie sighs. Leans over and sets the mug down on the table before taking a breath, visibly steeling himself.

“Hey,” he says, turning to look at Buck. “I’m glad you called me. Even when we drive each other crazy, I got your back, Buck. Just like I know you got mine.” He reaches out to grasp Buck’s shoulder.

It hurts a little, the way Eddie’s hand seems to just _fit_ in the groove of that juncture between Buck’s neck and shoulder, thumb grazing his pulse point, the tendons standing in sharp relief. But the familiarity of the gesture is like an anchor, keeping Buck from the receding waters, the destroyed shoreline, the mess in his head.

“Talk to me,” Eddie says. “What can I do? What do you need?”

Eddie’s voice is like a lighthouse in the dark, something steady and warm and comforting and so desperately _wanted_ that it’s almost too much. It makes Buck’s chest ache again, an intense pressure that swells between his ribs. 

Makes him close his eyes and drag a trembling hand over his face, trying so hard not to be too greedy, too needy.

“Could you just sit with me?” Buck asks. There’s a raw quality to his voice, scraped clean of any artifice, just his heart beating on his sleeve for Eddie to see.

“Can we just sit here, and maybe my brain will shut up? I know it’s dumb, I _know_ it’s - but I go to sleep, and I’m under the ladder truck and I can’t get out, and then there’s water everywhere, Eddie. It’s getting in my mouth, and I can’t breathe, and I can’t see and I know there are people out there, people who need my help. But I can’t do anything. I keep screaming and all that comes out is more water. No one hears. No one _comes_.”

On the last word, Buck’s voice cracks, and the grip on his shoulder tightens for an instant before Eddie is tugging him close, wrapping his arms around Buck in a bear hug that feels like the sun on skin - a comforting, cocooning slide of body heat, leeching more of the cold from Buck’s bones. Shaking in spite of himself, Buck grabs at the fabric of Eddie’s shirt, holding on for dear life.

“I’m here,” Eddie says, hushed. He runs his hands up and down the slope of Buck’s back, firm strokes that calm the trembling in slow degrees.

When they carefully, painstakingly part, Buck swipes under his eyes like a child. There are no tears, but it feels like he needs to clear the ghost of them anyway.

Eddie’s eyes look faraway for a moment, taking on an unfocused sheen as he reaches out. Gently, almost without touching him at all, Eddie cradles Buck’s face, thumb following a path under the hollows of Buck’s cheek. The gesture is unfamiliar, but not unwelcome. Buck tries not to lean into Eddie’s palm.

“You had these cuts,” Eddie says, and his gaze shutters for a second before blazing back to life. “That day. Gouges. Like an animal clawed you open.”

Buck remembers the stitches, the blood, the fear that he’d bleed out in the water before finding Christopher.

“Yeah,” he says, cracking a weak grin. “Good thing I’m still pretty, right?”

Eddie sounds almost wistful as he confirms, “You’re still pretty.” 

His hand drops into his lap, fingers curled into a fist. “When that woman handed off Chris…” he begins. “When Chris said he’d been looking for you. When we turned around and you were on the ground with that oxygen mask and that look in your eyes like you’d seen a miracle. All I could see were those cuts.” 

Eddie’s tone is even, calm. But there is a remnant of that remembered terror in the way his eyes are too wide, glassy.

“Buck.” There is gravel in his voice now, a roughness, a break. “You dream about the water. _I_ dream about what happened to your face.”

Buck’s body jerks involuntarily at the force of Eddie’s words, the sheer surprise of them.

“You…” Buck clears his throat and tries again. “You have nightmares, too?” he asks. “About me?” 

He feels winded for some reason, knocked out by the admission. By the admission coming from _Eddie_ , who never seems to be afraid of anything.

Eddie’s shoulders tense. “I have nightmares too,” he confirms. _About losing you,_ he doesn’t add. He doesn’t need to. It hangs in the air between them, important.

Buck’s skin feels flushed. He is unmoored, suddenly. Adrift by the simple gravity of Eddie’s admission. 

“I didn’t know,” he says, almost to himself.

Eddie shakes his head, shoulders relaxing. “I never said,” he answers simply. 

Buck’s eyelid twitches, his body swaying closer to Eddie’s, drowsiness finally getting the best of him. “I guess I never said, either.” The words slur a bit, a soft susurrus of sound. “’m glad I’m telling you now.”

For a moment everything reels, and then Eddie gives an exasperated noise before tugging Buck close again, pressing their foreheads together, the anchoring clasp of Eddie’s fingers at the nape of Buck’s neck keeping them both upright.

“I’m glad you’re telling me now, too,” Eddie mutters. His words drift, light as a kiss, against Buck’s mouth. 

Despite his exhaustion, Buck feels a yearning in the pit of his stomach, a stirring of desire and _want_ that feels very strange and out of context but also perfectly reasonable given the circumstances of Eddie’s objectively handsome face so close to his. 

He would think more about it, puzzle it all out, but he’s so damn tired. 

They sit like that for a long moment, until the morning spreads a buttery light over the surface of Buck’s hardwood floors, and it becomes clear how late - or early - it really is.

“Dude,” Buck says around a yawn. “Maybe we should try to sleep?”

Eddie’s fingers squeeze for a second before he huffs a laugh and moves back a little, pressing the heels of his palms to his own eyes.

“Shit,” he says. “Yeah, I think we probably should. C’mere.”

He stands and there’s such an expectant look on his face, that when he reaches out a hand to tug Buck up too, Buck takes it without argument. 

“Carla’s with Christopher till tomorrow night,” Eddie says, grunting as he redistributes Buck’s weight so that he’s planted on two sure feet. “Wanna get upstairs and under that new weighted blanket someone very good-looking got you for your birthday?”

Buck mumbles, “Not _that_ good-looking,” but there’s a smirk on Eddie’s face as they clumsily make their way up the steps that suggests he isn’t very convincing.

“I could go back down and take the couch,” Buck says, when they’re sprawled across the bed, graceless and heavy in the way managed only by two very large men in a small confined space. “I might wake up again. I might wake up screaming, or, or hit you, or kick you. I don’t know. It gets messy sometimes.”

Buck’s not sure whether he’s giving a warning or an apology. Maybe it’s a reminder that he’s still kind of fucked up. That he’s still afraid. That there might be nothing that can mitigate that fear.

Maybe it’s an ask for Eddie to be there anyway.

Eddie reaches over to muss Buck’s hair, laughing sleepily at Buck’s indignant yelp.

“My kind of mess,” he yawns, sounding inordinately fond. His hand is a heavy weight on Buck’s chest, thumb and forefinger framing his heart, and the reedy beat of Eddie’s pulse aligns, just for a moment, with Buck’s own.

“I’m not going anywhere, pal,” Eddie mutters, squinting once, twice, then fluttering his eyelashes shut. “I’m stayin’ right here.” 

Eddie's such a good man, and such a stubborn bastard, that when he says things like that, it sounds not so much like a promise as it does a truth, something so irrevocably certain that there's no sense doubting it. 

Buck feels his shoulders creep down from his ears, an ease and unwinding of the tight muscles in his body. He brings a hand up to grip Eddie's wrist, and slowly, slowly, he lets his eyelids droop.

"Thanks, Eddie," he says, and what he means, a bit, is _I might love you_.

"We're getting you a bigger bed," Eddie grumbles, already drifting off. "Lotsa throw pillows. This is sad, Buckley."

And what Buck thinks he means, a bit, is _I might love you too, you idiot._

With a smile on his lips and Eddie by his side, Buck turns his face into the pillow. 

Shuts his eyes.

Thinks of strong arms, warm hands, sincerity like honey dripping off a familiar voice. The anchoring hold of brown eyes lit hazel in the sun, and someone who believes in him even when he doesn't believe in himself.

Like a talisman, like a ward, any remnants of cold wash clean away, lost to the soft snores coming beside him. 

And Buck?

Finally lets himself sleep.

|

  
He has no dreams.

And when he wakes up, Eddie is still there.

For the first time in a long time, that's enough.

|

_No matter how far we get_

_Oceans we are in still connect_

_And when the currents circle back again_

_They'll carry us with them to the arms of the same sea_


End file.
